Many engineering alloys are fabricated by casting and hot pressing techniques followed by various types of hot mechanical working to refine the course grain structure and break up impurity agglomerates in the form of inclusions in the structure; however, such a procedure is generally not used with beryllium bodies since the mechanical properties of beryllium, particularly ambient temperature ductility, become anisotropic when beryllium is mechanically worked by conventional techniques such as rolling, extrusion, forging and swwaging. This is caused by non-uniform slip on an atomic scale which causes certain planes (basal) in the crystal lattice to become aligned parallel to the surface of the worked surface. Such alignment of crystal planes called texture causes the metal to have very low ductility perpendicular to the direction in which the predominant metal flow has occurred. In rolled sheet, for example, this means that the ductility through the thinnest section of the sheet is extremely low and the sheet can tolerate very little bending before fracturing in a brittle matter.
Since deformation and subsequent recrystalization to a refined microstructure are traditional ways of improving the properties of many engineering alloys it would be desirable to be able to deform beryllium without producing texture.